He began sprinting easily toward her, and as the distance shortened, he
recognized her. Edith Bailey, a second-year psychology major who had
been attending his classes two semesters. Very intelligent, reclusive,
not a local-grown product. Her work had a grimness about it, as though
psychology was a dire obsession, especially abnormal psychology. One of
her theme papers had been an exhaustive, mature but somehow overly
determined, treatise on self-induced hallucination and auto-suggestion.
He had not been too impressed because of an unjustified emphasis on
supernatural myth and legend, including werewolves, vampires, and the
like.

She sprang to a stop like a cornered deer as she saw him suddenly
blocking the path. She turned, then stopped and turned back slowly. Her
eyes were wide, cheeks flushed. Taut breasts rose and fell deeply, and
her hands were poised for flight.

But she wasn't looking at his face. Her gaze was on the blood
splattering his clothes.

He was breathing deeply too. His heart was swelling with exhilaration.
His blood flowed hotly. Something of the whirling ecstasy he had known
back in his student days as a track champion returned to him--the mad
bursting of the wind against him, the wild passion of the dash.

A burly figure came lurching after her down the path. A tramp,
evidently, from his filthy, smoke-sodden clothes and thick stubble of
beard. He recalled the trestle west of the forest where the bindlestiffs
from the Pacific Fruit line jungled up at nights, or during long
layovers. Sometimes they came into the forest.

He was big, fat and awkward. He was puffing and blowing, and he began to
groan as Doctor Spechaug's fists thudded into his flesh. The degenerate
fell to his knees, his broken face blowing out bloody air. Finally he
rolled over onto his side with a long sighing moan, lay limply, very
still. Doctor Spechaug's lips were thin, white, as he kicked savagely.
He heard a popping. The bum flopped sidewise into a pile of dripping
leaves.

He stepped back, looked at Edith Bailey. Her full red lips were moist
and gleaming. Her oddly opaque eyes glowed strangely at him. Her voice
was low, yet somehow, very intense.

"Wonderful laboratory demonstration, Doctor. But I don't think many of
your student embryos would appreciate it."

* * * * *

Doctor Spechaug nodded, smiled gently. "No. An unorthodox case." He lit
a cigarette, and she took one. Their smoke